Saturday Grab Bag Confessional

A little while ago I set up a shelf on the wall in the little guy's room, much too high for him to reach, and on that shelf I arranged some toys, including a small wind-up fighter jet, two old school Transformers, and a set of Iron Man figures from the Superhero Squad line, which is designed in a cute, chunky style for little kids. Four figures total: one in the original gray armor, one in a late 80's silver and red version, one in a massive Hulkbuster gold and yellow armor (I think that one's from some time in the 90's) and a modern style one with the helmet held under the arm, revealing Tony Stark's smug puss. Anyway, sometimes the little guy plays with them, and then I put them back on the shelf when he's done, and one time when he wanted to play with them I lifted him up and he excitedly knocked everything off the shelf. I put everything back, except I couldn't find Tony, even after I looked beneath all the furniture to see if he had rolled under something.

Tony turned up the other day (my wife actually found him in a bin on the bookcase under the shelf, don't ask me how he ricocheted in there) and I was excessively relieved. Not so much because I was worried that the little guy was sad about a missing toy - he really couldn't have cared less. But every time I went into the little guy's room, it was bugging the bejeezus out of me. I had set up the Iron Man figures in a little diorama, with Tony right up front, and it told a kind of story, as if Tony were giving a tour of his Hall of Armor, and without him there ... gah. But he's back, and everything is in its proper place, and I'm much more settled.

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So speaking of superheroes with movie franchises, yes, of course, I saw the pictures on teh interwebs this week of Ryan Reynolds in the CGI Green Lantern costume. I've never hidden my general distate for prominent use of CGI, when it stops being an effect and starts being a major character, so using it as the costume for the main character - especially in the superhero genre where from a certain iconographic angle costume IS character - is a little problematic for me. But, another thing I've learned over the years is that I tend to be really repelled by stills of CGI effects, and then when they're actually up on screen in motion, they don't bother me quite so much. So, largely based on my deep and abiding love of all things Green Lantern, I'm willing myself to remain calm and go into the movie itself next summer with an open mind.


But yeesh, that thing looks nothing like the costume from the comics. I've heard some people float a theory that it's some kind of mid-transformation image, that the green lights will flow across Reynolds as above but then settle into a more recognizable pattern of solids. We'll see.

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Another issue associated with the stem-cell production drug I'm on is that I'm forbidden to do any "heavy weightlifting or heavy cardio". Aw, shucks. Because I was totally gonna get on that starting, um, today. But now I'll just have to wait.

Of course, I got a bit of a workout yesterday evening, as it happened. First I got on a Metro train to head home and discovered the train's air conditioning was out of service, so, that sucked. It was so sweltering I could barely concentrate on the book I was trying to read (and it's a pretty compelling book). Then I got off the train and walked over to the Matro parking garage where I had parked my car. Not my usual spot, but I had been off-schedule after my injections and had to take what I could get. Well, long story short, I learned a valuable lesson about that parking garage, which is that it is a crazy concrete funhouse where you can only get to certain parts versus other parts depending on which stairwell you use to enter the thing. I made the mistake of going in a different staircase from the one I had come out in the morning, and proceded to spend a good 15, 20 minutes wandering up and down the ramps looking in vain for my car. Finally I exited the structure and came back in the way I had in the morning, and lo, there was my car, just in time for me to collapse into it in a sweaty heap.

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So today is day two of stem cell overproduction and I'm hanging in there, popping Tylenol every six hours or so. I had some other unpleasant side effects this afternoon - I think? Maybe? They were, um, gastrointestinal in nature and maybe that's because of the weirdness going on with my augmented body chemistry but, you know, it's entirely possible that it was all due to the sketchy all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet I hit for lunch on Friday. In any case hopefully the worst has passed.